Did you know that there are a million germs on just one shopping cart handle? I hate to imagine how many are living and crawling on the actual inside of the cart… you know where you put your food.

Never mind the fact that it’s the food itself (spinach, tomatoes, beef…) that has posed all the recent dangers. The fact that I know creepy-crawlies are on my shopping cart makes me want to stand up and do something about it.

Of course, it’s a company called PureCart that is trying to scare up buyers for their shopping cart sanitizing system. According to their website:

Studies have shown there are 1 million germs on just ONE shopping cart handle and that food-borne bacteria is the cause of 75 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths annually.

Wow. From the sound of that it seems like PureCart is the answer to all our health needs. I never knew that salmonella and E-coli could be directly attributed to shopping cart handles. I guess more people open up that package of tainted beef and spread it over the cart than I had thought. Maybe we should ask the homeless how they do it; somehow they seem to keep multiplying among all those infected shopping carts.

As a side note, apparently our cars are full of bugs too. That’s it. I’m going back in the bubble.

via OhGizmo!

On Monday, computer scientists at Stanford demonstrated their AI helicopter, sending it flying around campus all on its own. Instead of reveling in its new found freedom, the ‘copter performed aerobatics that it learned from watching a radio-controlled helicopter flown by a human.

The AI system communicates with a ground-based computer that does the actual guiding. Each helicopter costs approximately $4,000 and is outfitted with an accelerometer, gyroscope and a magnetometer to determine its orientation and acceleration, and a GPS or two ground-based cameras to determine its location.

Potential uses for the helicopter include not only the obligatory military mission, (where it will certainly learn its taste for blood) but also for investigating wildfires or other surveillance and mapping applications.

I’m getting all wrapped up in this interview with Peter Moore over at The Guardian. In today’s second part, he recounts his transition from the demise of the Dreamcast to his eventual move over to Microsoft. Seems he held some resentment against Sony PR for getting in the way of his Dreamcast plans.

After a hard time shifting Sega into a third party developer, he met up with Steve Ballmer who convinced him MS was ready to take on Sony. The focus was a head to head battle, and apparently Nintendo was an aside, although the conversation touched upon acquiring the sleeping giant. Imagine that, if Nintendo was a part of Microsoft…

There are some good specific Xbox 360 details too. From spending a day choosing which “mnemonic shhhhh noise” to choose for boot up, to confusing the bloggers with 20 different prototypes, it all makes for good reading.

This just makes sense. A nice little portable digital photo frame. Small and compact, the frame is perfect for showing off pics of the fam. It even comes with a leather protective case.

Power is supplied to the frame either through an AC adapter or via a USB cable. The rechargeable battery can handle up to two hours of show time between charges. Up to 45 JPEG pictures can be stored in internal memory, while SD, SDHC and MMC external formats are supported. The panel has an aspect ratio of 4:3 at 320×240 resolution, while having a contrast ratio of 400:1.

The frame isn’t gonna do much for the tech geek, but that is obviously not who this is aimed for. Gramma, however? It might just be perfect. Just remember to update the frame when you go visit her (tell her to pay you back the $60).

New, so check HP for availability.

Here’s a pretty sweet looking new frame from HP. A mahogany solid wood frame surrounds the 10.4” LCD panel. It comes with two sets of interchangeable double mats allowing the ability to match a wide décor.

The frame handles all the common memory cards, including: CF, MD, MS, MMC, SD and xD. In addition there is a USB port for thumb drives. Internal memory included is 512MB. It supports JPEG, MPEG1, MPEG4, Motion JPEG and MP3 file formats.

The panel has a 4:3 aspect ratio, a 400:1 contrast ratio and brightness is rated at 250 cd/m2. A remote control and power adapter is included.

Several viewing options are available, from the quadrant view shown to video or slide show playback with or without music.

Yeah, I’d hang that on the wall. It’s new, so check here for availability. And have your $220 ready.

Ceravision has been producing a lamp system they call Ecolumination. Using microwaves to supply the energy, they focus the power into a small quartz or ceramic bulb. The company explains that because they are electrode-less, they last longer, while the technology provides high quality, energy efficient light.

Last month they worked their technology into the headlights of a BMW racecar and took it out for a fast test spin. They ran the test at Silverstone, the home of the British F1 Grand Prix.

Tim Reynolds, Ceravision’s CEO, explains:

“The automotive project was conceived to demonstrate the effectiveness of Ceravision’s Ecolumination lamps in the extreme environment of motor sport. Under test conditions on the Silverstone circuit, the headlights showed significantly lower energy usage than that of current headlamps or the projected savings from future LED lights.”

The company is now seeking partners to bring the headlights rapidly to market. You can check out more of the tech, here.

Whether you’re slogging your way through a long flight, or just need a little peace of mind with your music, check out this affordable set of cans.

The Plane Quiet Platinum Noise Canceling Headphones roll in at $99.95 and is compatible with… well, you know, stuff. So plug ‘em in to your whatever and cancel up to 80% of ambient noise.

Tech specs and features after the jump.

Technical specifications of the Plane Quiet(R) Platinum headset include:
— Noise cancellation: up to 18db between 150-400Hz.
— Frequency response: 20-20,000Hz.
— Impedance: 32ohm, +/-10 percent
— Cable length: 0.8m; 35mm diameter
— Weight: 5.12 oz.

Features & Accessories

Up to 18 decibels of active noise reduction
Flat-folding design
Protective Storage/travel pouch
Luxurious leather wrapped ear cups & headband
Noise cancellation on/off switch
Gold plated 1/4th inch stereo pin
Gold plated 1/8th inch to 1/4th inch adapter
Gold plated dual-pin adapter
Two AAA batteries included
Compatible with: iPod ®/ MP3, CD, DVD players/laptop computers/ desktop computers
Limited one-year warranty
FAA compliant

We already know how Apple feels about tethering, which is sometimes Apple-legal and sometimes not. However, for jailbroken phones you now have what is promised as a quick and easy way (10 second-easy, that is) to tether your laptop to your iPhone.

On Saturday, Addition released iPhoneModem for iPhones using the Cydia package manager. Apple has been dragging their feet in responding to their application request, so now you can get it as shareware for only 10 bucks.

Ten bucks for ten second ease. Consider this your PSA for the day. Check out the forums over at ModMyiPhone for a quick rundown of how it’s working. (Hint: Very good)

via Gizmodo

The Guardian has a pretty cool interview up with Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. Back in the day, he was head of Sega of America. In fact, he was the guy who killed the Dreamcast.

As awesome as the Dreamcast was, maybe it’s a good thing it died; it served its purpose. It helped usher in the next-gen era of console gaming by supporting broadband capabilities. It could even be argued that they forged the casual gaming space with games like Samba de Amiga and whatever-the-hell that Leonard Nimoy fish game was called. Oh yeah, Seaman. Anyways, I have a hard enough time choosing between the 3 current consoles, I don’t need a fourth cluttering up my mind.

Perhaps it’s not fair to blame Peter Moore for the death of the Dreamcast anyways. He was probably just the triggerman. In fact, even though the Dreamcast was a success, it wasn’t enough of a success to justify continued production:

“We had a tremendous 18 months. Dreamcast was on fire – we really thought that we could do it. But then we had a target from Japan that said – and I can’t remember the exact figures – but we had to make N hundreds of millions of dollars by the holiday season and shift N millions of units of hardware, otherwise we just couldn’t sustain the business.”

The interview makes for an interesting read about the early days of the console wars. Make sure you make it to the end, where he talks about playing NBA 2K1 with Ice Cube and reveals that even he wasn’t too sure about the modem actually working. Ah, the early days of the console wars.

Damn, that’s harsh. A woman in India has been convicted of murder because her brain scans said so. If that sounds like a pretty shaky conviction to you, you’re not alone.

BEOS begins with a silent suspect and an EEG. When details of the crime are read aloud the resulting brain scans are then analyzed. Basically, if something lights up where it shouldn’t then that person is “proved” guilty. It’s important to mote that software converts the EEG readings into viewable scans. Naturally, the inventors have high praise for the system, claiming that it can even differentiate the difference between crimes committed and events witnessed.

The Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test, or BEOS, was developed by Champadi Raman Mukundan, an Indian neuroscientist who formerly ran the clinical psychology department of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore.

From IHT:

The technologies, generally regarded as promising but unproved, have yet to be widely accepted as evidence — except in India, where in recent years judges have begun to admit brain scans. But it was only in June, in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, that a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect’s brain held “experiential knowledge” about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison.

Researchers have been working forever on trying to find a reliable method for lie detection. Maybe this is the Rosetta Stone. Yeah. Maybe so. Except that this technology that has been used to sentence a woman to life in prison has not been independently tested or published in a “respected scientific journal”.

Reaction to the conviction based on the BEOS test has stirred up the neuroscience community, eliciting responses such as “shaky at best”, “interesting and disturbing” and “not… credible”.

Judge S. S. Phansalkar-Joshi included a nine-page defense of BEOS as part of his opinion on the case.

IHT via Slashdot

HP denies that they are making an OS to rival Vista, but, they do acknowledge that they are developing software that would bypass some of its functions altogether. HP formed the “customer experience” group nine months ago in an effort to give customers a quick and easy alternative to certain applications. The team is focusing on touchscreen technology where users can watch movies or view pictures.

While HP will not go as far to say that they are developing a complete OS, Business Week claims to have sources that say employees in their PC division are doing just that. A Linux based OS could be “simpler and easier for mainstream users”.

Phil McKinney, chief technology officer in HP’s PC division says the idea is a possibility, but HP is not funding a massive move away from the Windows ecosystem:

“Is HP funding a huge R&D team to go off and create an operating system? [That] makes no sense. For us it’s about innovating on top of Vista.”

Intel and Dell have also recently made strides away from Microsoft, with both promoting Linux based systems for their netbooks.

It’s not cold yet, but winter is just around the corner. Plan ahead this season with Dots Gloves. Tiny little metal dots stud the fingertips of each digit, allowing finger-less contact for touchscreen devices.

It’s simple. It’s smart, and they promise it won’t scratch up your iPod or iPhone. You might want to wear these in any season, if just to keep fingerprints off your stuff.

Dots Gloves via Wired

The energy debate isn’t going away anytime soon… if ever. Two of the big topics are of course, foreign oil and global warming. We want it here, we want it cheap and we want it clean. The Air Force (as a large fuel consumer) is trying to paint coal as a solution.

DARPA is sponsoring a $4.5 million research effort to find new ways to turn coal into liquid fuel. The existing Fischer-Tropsch method of squeezing fuel out of coal or natural gas actually creates more carbon dioxide than traditional, refined burning does. The coal-to-liquids (CTL) solicitation from DARPA is…:

…interested in processes that will ultimately enable the United States to economically extract energy from its coal resources in the form of liquid fuels using coal to liquid conversion technologies that are environmentally friendly and cost competitive with petroleum based fuels.

Have you ever actually held a piece of coal? It’s dirty. It’s hard for me to imagine how it could ever be made to burn cleanly. Of course I don’t have the answer to the world’s energy needs, but instinctually, it seems to me that DARPA might be looking up the wrong tailpipe.

This week Google announced Mobile Search with My Location, for devices running on Windows Mobile. By either using GPS or cell-ID, Google can tap into your location and deliver location-specific information.

Previously, the system returned results based on the last location entered. The new Search with My Location feature will be able to give much more precise results.

You have to specifically opt in to use the service and you can always change that setting. Google assures users that personally identifiable information is never associated with you location. At least we know they have privacy issues on the brain.

Yesterday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the state’s anti-spam law unconstitutional. Good news to the ears of Jeremy Jaynes who gets a free pass. The spammer was previously convicted as the first felony spammer in the country in a 2004 trial. He had been sentenced to nine years.

Ugh. It’s still morning here on the West Coast.

Justice G. Steven Agee wrote the court’s unanimous decision, stating:

“The right to engage in anonymous speech, particularly anonymous political or religious speech, is ‘an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment,’ ” Agee wrote, citing a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court case.

“By prohibiting false routing information in the dissemination of e-mails,” the court ruled, Virginia’s anti-spam law “infringes on that protected right.”

While Jaynes’ appeal certainly worked in his favor, prosecuting attorney, General Robert F. McDonnell immediately said he would appeal the case to the US Supreme Court:

“The Supreme Court of Virginia, has erroneously ruled that one has a right to deceptively enter somebody else’s private property for purposes of distributing his unsolicited fraudulent e-mails. . . . We will take this issue directly to the Supreme Court of the United States. The right of citizens to be free from unwanted fraudulent e-mails is one that I believe must be made secure.”

It’s no secret that Yahoo has been struggling. It seemed they went one way and the rest of the web went another. Well, fine. They’re big enough to take to take a few wrong turns. Now however, they want to get on the same path that others like Facebook and MySpace have been following. To do this they need to attract developers – developers that have been flocking to other sites such as Google or Facebook. But to do that, they need to make things easier for developers in the first place.

Earlier this year Yahoo announced the Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS), in which they plan to open all Yahoo sites. Their immediate focus is upon social networking, in that they hope to create a dashboard for users where their social profile is fully integrated across the Yahoo brand. Today and tomorrow they are hosting Open Hack Day in an effort to draw in more developers.

From PC World:

These include the YOS application platform and a preview of social APIs (application programming interfaces) that will let programs access end user data. The platform and APIs will be available only in preview mode during the event. They will be publicly released in the coming months, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo has taken a lot of heat in recent years, and the article goes on to make clear that they still have a long way to go to get to where they need to be. However, by opening up their APIs for developers (if only for the event) at least they are faced in the right direction.

Whoa! That looks like a monster. It seriously seems as if that iPhone has its own Marshall half-stack. Neither the press release or the sell-sheet say how powerful those speakers are, but, hey, there are four of ‘em – so it’s gotta be loud, right?

Ok, ok, so they are only 2” speakers, but you probably weren’t looking for something to blow down your neighbor’s wall anyways. You might just be more interested in the fact that it works for both versions of the iPhone, along with any iPod that docks. Or perhaps it would be nice to know that the music automatically pauses when an incoming call is detected. Maybe it’s the auxiliary input or the FM receiver you’re looking for.

If you were looking for something to blow down your neighbor’s wall, you won’t find any help here. But you will find details from Altec Lansing about this docking system after the jump.

inMotion MAX Portable Digital Music System for iPhone and iPod
Tracing back to its roots as the first developer of the iPod docking system, Altec Lansing is launching the new inMotion MAX – a slim, portable, all-in-one music system designed to reproduce natural sound of the highest quality in its class. Using proprietary ESS technology, XdB bass-enhancement and twin precision-matched speakers, the new Altec Lansing inMotion MAX delivers sound unmatched by the competition and at a surprisingly large stereophonic range – easily filling any size room with rich, realistic, distortion-free audio.

Compatible with Apple iPhone, Apple iPod and most MP3 players, the inMotion MAX speaker system automatically pauses music when a call is received on an iPhone. The inMotion MAX is fully immune to GSM and Wi-Fi signals – preventing the speakers from picking up potential intermittent noises emitted by the iPhone 3G, original iPhone or other mobile devices. The inMotion MAX supports iPhone and iPod alarm and sleep timer features and is additionally equipped with a built-in digital FM radio and high contrast LCD to display songs and FM station data (RDS). A rechargeable lithium-ion battery provides up to 3.5 hours of continuous play.

The Altec Lansing inMotion MAX (iMT702) system will be available October 2008 for $199.95 (U.S. MSRP).

If you’re on a budget or just want to kick out in a different direction from ordinary docks and speakers, you might wanna take a look at the Orbit. To me it looks like a mashup of a tuna can, an old-timey microphone element and an ashtray, but your experience may vary. I better just let Altec Lansing describe it for you. Press release after the jump.

New Orbit MP3 Ultra Portable Music Speaker: A Mighty Little Speaker
The new Orbit MP3 ultra-portable mini-speaker follows the success of Altec Lansing’s wildly popular Orbit MP3-207 (introduced in Fall 2007). With a rugged new design, the Orbit MP3 offers instant connectivity and 24-hours of continuous play from any digital audio device including iPhones, iPods or laptops. Weighing in at less than seven ounces, the diminutive, single-driver Orbit MP3 delivers a surprisingly clear, rich 360-degree field of full-spectrum sound without distortion.

Altec Lansing’s new Orbit MP3 speaker features a redesigned on/off button and battery indicator light. A wrap-around cord fits the connector cable neatly into the underbelly of the speaker for protection and convenience. And a neoprene case with carabineer hook safely stores the speaker when not in use.

The Altec Lansing Orbit MP3 will be available October 2008 for $39.95 (U.S. MSRP).

Maybe because its been a long week, or maybe because this really is cool, but either way the Moondance GLOW sounds awesome. The iPod docking station for the bedroom not only does all your standard alarm-clocking, iPod-playing and remote controller-ing, it also glows. Glowing music and a big ol’ pillow sounds pretty sweet right now.

The docking station comes complete with two 3” speakers. A built in FM tuner is incorporated along with an auxiliary input for a second audio source. A remote control is included for handling the FM radio, alarm, playlist and song navigation. Additionally, there is a snazzy looking wireless snooze remote… which I wanna hit now and go back to sleep.

Oh, but before this post makes me too tired, I should mention that the Altec Lansing Moondance GLOW (iM402) will be available October 2008 for $179.95 and is compatible with all docking iPod models.

Huh? 2.2? Yup. Each of those ominous-looking speakers has a 4” subwoofer pointing straight down. Standing at 10” high, the Altec Lansing Expressionist BASS (FX3022) system is designed to be used on a tabletop, which would then radiate sound. The inclusion of the subwoofer into the normal form factor eliminates the need for a third bass-amplifying component.

Each speaker also houses a 1.5” inch full-range speaker with a total continuous power of 25 Watts RMS. Power and volume controls are integrated and an AUX in jack is incorporated for hooking in your mp3 player.

These beauties are gonna cost you $129.95 for the pair. Look for them to be available in October.